Pride Lights

A box that remotely controls an LED Strip to show several pride flags

The Story Behind the Project

This is a fun combination of the item tracker and some code from the Christmas ornaments. A student employee recently programed several pride identity flags in to the lights at work (which sync to the Christmas decorations) so that the LED strip behind our front sign can light up in the pattern of nine different pride flags.

The director of the university's LGBTQ+ center came in for something unrelated, thought the pride flag lights were neat, and asked if we could help program her LED strip to act the same way in their office. I took the item tracker box design, made a few modifications, and boom! Pride flag remote control! "Get Trans'ed!" (as my student employee who programed the flags would say).

Features

• Uses ESP Now for point-to-point wireless communication that doesn't rely on a network or server, is fast and reliable, has good range, and doesn't require extra hardware.

• I re-used the Christmas ornament command interpretation code, so new flags can be added just by adding code to the remote without needing to update the receiver.

• The color screen lets us display images of the real flags on the remote

• "Other Flags" button allows for the possibility of adding more flags in the future. This button will just cycle through all other ones, displaying each of their names and images on the screen